Romesh Ranganathan has revealed that his sons have suffered "abhorrent" racist abuse at school. The TV star, 48, has sons Alex, 16, Charlie, 14, and Theo, 12, with wife Leesa.
The Weakest Link host, who is the child of Sri Lankan Tamil parents, said: "The boys have had racist abuse. Not loads, not as much as I did, but they have had comments. We had a bit of an incident."
"One of the kids was chatting to a girl, just some friend at school, and one of the other kids said, 'I don't know why you're bothering to chat to her. You're going to end up marrying your cousin...'" He added: "Alex has had the P-word said to him, when he's been walking around school."
Parents' role
Romesh said some blame fell with the parents, saying: "At a certain point you've got to go 'they're obviously hearing that at home'. So whenever I see that or I hear that a kid's done it, the next time I see their parents I'm thinking 'you're racist', right? And that's a horrible thing."
Speaking on his Wolf and Owl podcast to co-host Tom Davis, Romesh added that while "racism is horrible and abhorrent," he thinks it's a "mistake to supercharge it".
He added: "What I mean by that is if somebody calls you a racial slur and it immediately ignites you, it gives that person power over you. I'm not saying you shouldn't react to racism, but I'm saying that immediately leading you to be violent is not something I want my kids to do."
His own experiences
Recalling his own school days, Romesh said: "I got slurs thrown at me a fair bit. I remember once I was walking out of school and like there was this kid that was sort of known for being racist just spat on me. Then at uni, it's happened a few times, I got jumped by skin-heads when I was coming out of a club."
The star, who previously worked as a teacher before finding fame in comedy, is now one of the biggest names on the BBC but has also publicly recalled his tricky upbringing that saw him and his mother endure time in bed-and-breakfast accommodation.
"This all happened very, very quickly. It was a struggle. My mum found out my dad had been messing around. He fell into financial difficulty so we ended up getting our house taken away. We were supposed to go into a council flat, but they didn't have enough so we were in a bed-and-breakfast for a year-and-a-half. And my dad was in prison. It was insane."
Career plans
Just weeks ago, Romesh addressed rumours that he was to quit showbiz altogether ahead of his milestone 50th birthday but insisted that wasn't exactly the case. He clarified that he wasn't really ditching his career entirely, but planned to slow the pace, and explained it to Tom on their podcast.
He said: "I'm not really walking away. There will be a big step back at 50. What I'm saying is, I'm doing the things I want to do because I'm building up to the big step back. I might do gigs here and there, but it's a big step back. I might call my tour 'The Big Step Back'. It'll be a mini tour and the last date will be on my 50th birthday and I'll say [while waving] 'It's been fun'."
